


A Legitimate Strategy

by arkosic



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-03
Updated: 2016-09-15
Packaged: 2018-07-29 04:45:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7670623
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arkosic/pseuds/arkosic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of Red Vs Blue miscellanea, aka the quick and the strange.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Digging Yourself Deeper

**Author's Note:**

> Tumblr prompt from jazzykiss: “Blue Team Wash dealing with Donut who may or may not know who he really is.”

“Look, it wasn’t anything personal,” Wash said, at the exact same moment Donut said, “Man, I love a good root!”

Silence tripped, fell, and landed solidly on its face.

“I’m sorry?” Wash said.

Donut lifted one hand and the packet it held, the words carrot seeds printed neatly across the top in Doc’s looping handwriting. “I just hope we’ll get enough sun here. It sure is a lot shadier than Valhalla, and these guys really do best somewhere warm and moist.” Before Wash could begin to phrase a response, the other soldier continued with, “And you know what, thanks. I really appreciate that! I know it’s not easy to face up to your mistakes, and I have to say I was pretty mad about the whole thing at first, but Doc kept saying how you actually had a soft centre under that prickly posterior-”

“I think you mean _exterior_ -“

“-and that you guys don’t even get vacations and you’re under a lot of stress! I guess it’s not all jet-packs and ninja-skills, huh. So apology accepted,” he finished with a magnanimous smile.

“What?” Wash said, and then, brain finally making the right connections, “No, wait. I’m not- I mean, I’m not glad that I- but that’s not what I was trying to-”

“Don’t worry, gardening is a great way to relax, you’ll see,” Donut declared blithely. “So how about we get you down on your knees and making us some holes, partner?”

Wash cast about in a last grab for some kind of assistance, and was rewarded with Doc leaning out from his doorway, possibly to check his conscripted helpers were still alive and well. The medic took one look at his desperate gaze, broke into a broad grin, and offered him the most enthusiastic thumbs-up the world had ever seen.

Wash’s grip tightened on the trowel. “Yes,” he said. “I will definitely _make some holes_.”


	2. What She Isn't

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AU: CT and Beta-Tex manage to form an alliance.

She can’t seem to stop touching things. She runs her thumbnail along the rough-cut edge of a meal tray, stretches her arms up to where the shower spray is strongest, tugs the end of her fringe through her fingers in a compulsive gesture that was never hers. Of all the side-effects she might have expected—and she had expected _something_ , braced her will and self against it—this is not what she had thought Tex would bring.

Despite her unease, it is easy to find the seam. Connie is quiet and cautious, with fitful bursts of irritation to hide fear and fitful bursts of fear to hide everything else. Tex thinks _it is_ instead of _it could be_ and steps with long strides from one emotion to the next and doesn’t hide her secrets so much as make clear the consequence for reaching after them. They do not harmonise; Connie-Tex may play silent tug-of-war sometimes, jostling over space and ideology, but there is no surfacing from a conversation to wonder which point of view belongs to which voice.

It shouldn’t last. It won’t: Connie makes mistakes and Allison always fails and there is none of the childish poetry to this joining that can bridge over the gaps made by steady hands that waver at the critical moment.

For now, however, they find enough to make it work. There is too much at stake, too many who cannot defend themselves, for them to splinter into halved wholes just yet.

For now, they force the compromises and face the changes, both small and soul-shaking. A sudden taste for bell peppers, a daily reminder of inhumanity.

For now, she allows the fingers sketching lazy circles on her bare stomach.


	3. Tuscan Red

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Something of a prequel to an AU posed by Nemonus, in which CT survives and ends up at Blood Gulch. Written towards the end of season 10, so does not take anything beyond that into account.

The sound of an axe punching through armour is a heart-deep _thud_ , much quieter than the crack of splitting wood, but for a half-second everyone pauses as though startled by the noise and that’s all the time that’s needed. A heave, a fall, and they tumble through the door in a graceless jumble of limbs, his elbow in her ribs and her arm around his waist.

“You idiot!” CT says, snarls, shrieks, and almost shakes the form clasped in her arms in eye-blinding, heart-tearing rage. “You idiot, you _idiot_!”

Joshua doesn’t snap back, though, because Joshua is having a bit of trouble getting words out around the three inches of steel buried in his chest, and his legs give way only a few steps into the shuttle. She drops with him, crouching on one knee to ease him back against the curved wall, but her eyes keep darting away from the wound and the swell of blood rising from it to the docking bay door and the agents still beyond. One heartbeat, two, and she spits a curse and lunges away towards the front of the ship. Her hands are steady as she punches in the numbers, no mistakes this time, and she doesn’t move from the screen until the departure countdown has commenced.

Joshua doesn’t move either.

It’s only once she gently slides the helmet from his head and thinks that maybe the heartbeats she counted were his that the trembling begins.

 

 

“And he left no last instruction?” Iver says. Not the woman she would have pictured from the communiqués and Joshua’s brief mentions; the ponytail is folded back to form a spiked fan behind her head, and the pained curve of her eyes holds none of the cool composure of her tone.

“No,” CT says, and doesn’t add that if he had, she wouldn’t have heard it.

The loss of Joshua’s squad is a hard one and no manner of codes and equipment can soften the blow. They don’t kill the messenger, but CT is not surprised by the cell.

 

 

She can’t return the favour when Iver comes with news of her own.

“The Mother of Invention?” CT says. “You’re sure?”

Iver’s eyes are sardonic this time, adding colour to her flat words. “We have yet to be permitted on board to assess the situation personally.” A delicate pause. “But we believe the information can be trusted, yes.”

CT glances down at linked fingers resting on her knees. An internal assault on the Mother of Invention. She thinks of a low murmur to a recording screen, a hastily placed dog-tag, a blonde-haired ghost. A black-suited assassin holding an axe.

“One of _your_ machinations?” Iver’s voice cuts into her reflections with little tenderness, and CT looks up sharply.

“From here?” she says, not bothering the hide the sarcasm behind her eyes.

Iver’s narrow very briefly, and then she dips her head in a polite nod and turns to walk away.

“I trusted someone,” CT says, quick and blunt and bitter with the unsaid. “Not with everything, but with…enough. Enough to know.”

The other woman pauses. Whatever she sees when she looks back softens her gaze, if not much. “And do you now think that was a sound choice?”

In the bay, she had thought she had made a terrible mistake; read too much humanity into an entity that surely wouldn’t have been standing there had it still the ability to care. Now, though… “Maybe,” she says.

Iver’s nod is more thoughtful this time. “Then I hope so as well.”

 

 

The second time she is invited to Iver’s quarters, she asks about the artefacts.

“That doesn’t concern you,” Iver says, but she frowns at her cup of coffee.

“It concerns me as much as any of you,” CT insists; her own cup is still full and rapidly cooling. “I risked everything. I _sacrificed_ everything. The data-”

“Is greatly appreciated,” Iver says. “As are the risks you’ve taken, agent.” For once, her eyes are exactly as cold as her words as she says, “The sacrifices, on the other hand, I feel are in equal measure.”

“No,” CT says, “they aren’t,” and watches Iver draw all the wrong conclusions.

 

 

The information comes in pieces and patches, and at first she thinks it is because they don’t trust her. They trusted Joshua, and it is as though he was the vital component to ensure compatibility; without him, she is Freelancer and they are Charon and they don’t speak the same language.

As it turns out, they don’t trust her, but the information is patchy because Freelancer is bent, not broken, and it guards its secrets as jealously as ever. Her codes still manage to bring them occasional whispers of agents on the move, and she hugs her knees to her chest and waits to hear the colours.

They’re never the right ones. The whispers never say why.

 

 

She stands next to her chair, and she can tell it displeases them—Iver’s slight grimace drowned out by her companion’s heavy scowl—but as long as they remain behind the desk she has no intentions of perching in front of it like a repentant student.

“Alpha’s not exactly an uncommon designation,” she says.

The man rolls his eyes, but Iver says smoothly, “So you’ve seen it used for your simulation exercises before?”

CT hesitates a moment before admitting, “No. In Project Freelancer…no. Only for the Alpha AI.”

“Then y'understand our train of thought, tricky as it is,” the man says.

She looks at Iver. “What about the artefact?”

“ _We’re_ handlin’ it,” the man says brusquely, leaning against the desk.

Iver murmurs, “Calvin,” and he turns his head away with a sharp snort. She returns CT’s gaze steadily. “The situation is complicated, and Project Freelancer remains a significant part of that complication.”

“I thought the reports were that Freelancer is distracted. And the Oversight Committee was supposed to help.”

“They should still help. The situation is just-”

“Complicated,” CT says.

Calvin curls his lip. “Here I thought diggin’ up the dirt in your precious outfit was right up your alley. Lost interest in playing the hero? ‘Spose the lack of parades might turn you off.”

“I don’t see anything to be interested in yet,” she snaps. “There were a dozen simulation bases. This could be a trap, or another one of his little experiments. A name isn’t enough to go on.”

“It isn’t,” Iver says agreeably. “However, we have heard rumours that there has been an unusual amount of action at the base recently. Rumours that suggest at least one Freelancer agent may be involved.”

That draws her up short, and she can tell they see it, both with narrowed eyes; his smug, hers considering. “Do you know who?” CT asks.

Iver shakes her head briefly, and then links her hands behind her back. The gesture prickles uneasily down CT’s spine. “The details are sparse, to say the least. It’s possible that it is one of the training scenarios you have mentioned, but Freelancer has been, as you say, distracted of late, and the…curious choice of designation adds greater significance to even the vaguest suggestions.”

“It’s almost as if we need someone to go poke around,” Calvin says mock-thoughtfully. “Good thing we know their ‘blue’ lot is gettin’ a new recruit; easy enough to tweak the paperwork there. Only fair to keep the sides balanced.”

CT looks between them. For all his sneers, Calvin has nipped at the truth of her; there are stones she had not the time or means to overturn, and they still tempt her. More than that, though, this is not the future she had hoped for. Parades are one thing, and freedom is another.

“You’d be putting me in a position where I could contact Freelancer again,” she says. “I could betray you.”

“Yes,” Iver says. “You could.”

CT sits in the chair. “What else can you tell me?” she says.

 

 

The armour they provide for her isn’t proper simulation gear, but it passes well enough. She’s willing to forgive it its flaws simply because it’s not the hideous bright red forced upon so many. There’s no way of knowing whether it’s a snide joke, a considerate gesture, or merely all they were able to get, but the dark dusty red they have provided could be a cousin to her old shades.

“It fits,” Iver says, though her eyes add an anxious question where her voice does not.

CT flexes, swivels her hips, and nods. “It fits enough.” She almost startles to hear herself through an armour’s systems once more, and after a moment lifts her hand to her throat. “I have a request.”

“Yes?”

“I want a component from my old armour.” She can see the flash of caution. “Nothing special. Just the voice filter.”

After a moment, Iver smiles. “I would say that qualifies as a reasonable precaution.”

 

 

The infiltration goes so smoothly that she’s almost unsurprised when she boards the transport and finds a soldier clad in yellow armour. She panics anyway.

Thankfully for all involved, it’s a short-lived alarm; a few terse questions and their baffling responses quickly decides two things. One, the other soldier is, despite her colouration, assigned to the Blue troopers as the information had stated. Two…

“ _I’m_ driving,” CT says.

 

 

She lands the transport at the designated zone between the two bases, and for a moment contemplates shooting her companion. They are, after all, officially on opposite sides of the staged conflict. It’s the kind of opportunism the Project specialises in, and though she would like to say that is why she reconsiders, in the end she just doesn’t want to draw too much attention this early on. She suspects the urge is mostly a result of the journey in any case.

No orders were provided about the method of making contact with the troopers—the entire system seems painfully disorganised these days, which is hopefully a reflection on the wider Project—and after an uncertain wait she decides to take matters into her own hands and strikes out away from the ship. The walk to the Red outpost is brisk and refreshing after months in space, giving her ample opportunity to observe the surroundings. It’s not a particularly interesting arena, with uncomfortably few opportunities for stealth tactics available as far as she can see, but it should at least be difficult to be ambushed in return.

She sights the two soldiers at the top of the base—one clad in dark red, the other in orange—when she is still some distance away, but although the flat plain of the canyon should offer them a clear look at her, they don’t seem to notice her approach until she is almost at their feet. A helmet twitches, breaking off a muffled conversation, and then the maroon soldier hurriedly elbows his partner, and CT draws to a halt to bear their stares with wary patience.

“What do you want?” the orange trooper shouts down to her at last, in the tone people use when they really want the answer to be _nothing_.

This mission is throwing too many discrepancies at her already, and it makes her hesitate, but the question of _Outpost Alpha_ still itches at the back of her brain so she straightens her spine and throws a sharp salute. “Private Hartford,” she says.

When all the trooper says is, “Oh you have _got_ to be kidding me,” she starts to feel some new regrets.


	4. Colourblind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt from Nemonus - “For Blood Gulch AU: In a moment of frustration, CT breaks the news to Sarge early that both teams are the same.”

Hartford was still sitting at the table as Simmons edged into the kitchen, and with his head in his hands it was a little difficult to tell whether or not the other soldier had noticed his approach. He briefly considered depositing his package quietly on the table and sidling out again, dismissed it on the grounds that Donut still hadn’t managed to patch up the last results of taking Hartford by surprise, and settled for clearing his throat.

The face-plate swung up sharply, but the shoulders drooped immediately as Hartford recognised him. “What do you want?”

“I have a present for you!” Simmons said with false brightness. “Well, not a present, really, more of an educational aid, but uh, it’s being presented free of charge and in the spirit of generosity?”

“A present,” Hartford said. A note of suspicion slid into his tone. “Why? What is it?”

Simmons immediately brandished his package, noting with distant satisfaction that the movement was flawless; practising in front of the mirror was always worth it. “ _This_ is a labeller. It has a digital array, two spools of spare tape, and an attractive metallic silver casing. You’ll soon see I’ve already preset two options – red and blue – so any time you’re confused, you can check, label, and not have to worry about getting mixed up ever again! You can also use it for other things, like labelling food in the kitchens and finding out how many people in this base can actually read.”

There was a long pause.

“Did the Sergeant order this?”

“Well…” Simmons hesitated, arm dropping down slightly. “Not _exactly_. Sarge made a suggestion, but after further consultation we decided to try a four-step plan instead.” He quickly assumed the pose again. “So here’s step one!”

Hartford stared at the labeller. “What’s step four?”

“Oh, uh.” Simmons found himself expressly not meeting Hartford’s eyes. “I don’t think you really need to worry about that. It’s more of a distant contingency anyway, and I’m pretty confident we won’t need to-”

“It’s ‘shotgun’, isn’t it.”

“…it’s shotgun.”

The quiet stretched on even longer this time, enough so that Simmons was starting to reconsider the deposit-and-retreat method, and then Hartford held his hand out. When Simmons continued to dither, the gloved fingers twitched in insistent impatience, and he hurriedly handed the labeller over.

“So-o,” Simmons said into the silence. “I hope you find it as useful as I do?”

Hartford just folded his arms on the table and plunked his head back on top of them.


End file.
